Showing results by author "F. L. Light" in All Categories

The fifty daughters of Danaos have with their father fled by ship from Egypt, escaping compulsatory marriage with their fifty cousins, the sons of Aegyptos. They arrive in Argos, where, by supplication to the king and people, they seek refuge from their cousins, who sailed in pursuit. Their devout abhorrence of the marriage is the weightiest theme of the play.

The Persians: A Translation from Aeschylus There is no drama where the total multiplicity of horror in defeat is more cogently presented than in the Persians by Aeschylus, who fought in the Athenian triumph at Salamis, where the Persian fleet was rammed and wrecked.

Aristotle's assertion that in Greek tragedy there is no loftier work than Oedipus the King cannot be lightly contradicted. This drama is endued fearfully with nature, as she works against the conscientiousness of measure found in man. Heretofore no translation of this play has been a poem of Sophoclean worthiness and work. The rhythmic stature of this translation runs with the Greek in heat and light.

In San Francisco, the new Bank of California would branch itself in Virginia City, Nevada, a mining town situated on a mountain side over the Comstock Lode of silver. As the branch's moment bigger grows under the direction of William Sharon, so a monopolistic sovereignty of mills and mines is ventured. This drama sets forth the actions of monopolist temerity and what success or miss the principals had. F. L. Light is the author of the Gouldium, a series of 24 dramas (all framed to his peculiar form of Athenian tragic poetry), on the life and times of Jay Gould.

Prince Kreon, enforcing an arbitrary mandate, is enraged that Antigone would abide by a natural law of sisterly respect in contradiction of his will. As neither can be reconciled with the other's acts, the drama grows devoutly tenebrous. This translation is iambic, as is most of the text in Greek.

A passage of diverse heroics and distant perseverance in quest of the Golden Fleece is with transcendent narrative and canonic rhythm in the Argonautica recounted. Jason and the Argonauts, sailing from Iolcos on the Argo, pass into the Euxine, or Black Sea, on their voyage to Colchis at the eastern end of the sea. F L Light's translation re-embodies the motive energy of metric Apollonius in this epic of golden probation in endurance and dispatch.

Frederick Lazarus Light's resolve to write a greater Iliad in English than Homer composed in Greek is manifest. This translation impersonates Homeric Greek. It runs with Achilleus and like man-shattering Hector in the shock of arms is resolutely sharp. As unrelenting as sublimity, not yielding lyrically, unprosaically vindicating Homer's vision, the brightest labor has been attempted and is brought over as a consummate attempt.

Cato, the enemy of Caesar, escaped with other Roman senators and remnant legions from the battle of Pharsalus to the Libyan coast, where again Caesar defeated them. The senatorial generals decide to sail for Spain, but Cato prefers to stay in Utica, where no pardon from Caesar he'd permit.

After Zeus has learned that Prometheus stole his sovereign property, fire, and conveyed it to mankind, he orders Hephaistos, under the direction of Power and Force, to bind his adversary to an arduous crag of most difficult remoteness on the earth. As the Titan responds to this punishment, the reader is inspired with the fire of individual affirmation, devoted indomitably to life and liberty.

As the southernmost line in New York State, the Erie Railroad in the 1860s ran from Jersey City to Lake Erie. Commodore Vanderbilt considered it an appropriate expansion to his New York Central and tried to corner Erie's shares. This drama represents how three of Erie's directors, Jay Gould, Jim Fisk and Daniel Drew, fought a financial war to check his acquisition. But the main part to Vanderbilt belongs as the most triumphant American of the nineteenth century.

In the early 1870s Henry Clay Frick, bred in the coal-lands of western Pennsylvania, foresaw the importance of coke in the Bessemer or Kelly process of steel-making. Superiors and Inferiors presents his ascendancy in the business of coke and sets forth his heavy wrangle with the union. This historical drama maintains the classical form of tragedy in English with seven scenes of dialogue and seven choral performances.

In three forcible disruptions, first in April 1885 and last in March-April 1886, the Knights of Labor assailed locomotive operations or stopped work on railroads which were controlled directly or influentially by Jay Gould. Though both Terence Powderly, the chief executive of the Knights, and Gould decried the strikes, they could not easily resolve their labored variance. This play is one of the Gouldium, a series of dramas on the life and times of Jay Gould. As in most of these plays there are seven scenes of dialogue and seven choral episodes.

The longer that Jay Gould was chief shareholder of Union Pacific, the more advancements for the railroad and for his own system of roads he procured. His adversaries in this drama are the executives of the Chicago Burlington and Quincy Railroad who disputed the rates and branches of the Iowa Pool of railroads with him. There are also reconcilements in this play, first with Carlos Greeley of the Kansas Pacific bondholders and the other with Henry Villard.

Cuthbert and Richard Burbage inherited the theater from their father, James, who was its builder and manager. Upon jarred transactions with their landlord, they resolve both to raze and restore the theater, preparing for a shift across the Thames. The Siblings Burbage presents the dramatic troubles of this action. This historical drama maintains the classical form of tragedy in English, with seven scenes of dialogue and seven choral performances.

This drama follows the myth of Iphigenia at Aulis, where she is subject to human sacrifice by her father Agamemnon. He draws her and Clytemnestra, her mother, thither with a promise of marriage to Achilles. The necessities of sacrifice are both in dialogue and in choral poetry weighed and judged. This play concludes either in an epiphany of wisdom or of violence. A form for tragedy in English, distinguished by seven scenes of dialogue and seven choral performances, is established in this play.

A few months after the accession of King James in 1603, Sir Walter Raleigh and his friend, Henry Lord Cobham, among others, were accused of treason. I am the Raleigh is a drama of Sir Walter’s trial, when he strove with Edward Coke, the great accuser, to exonerate himself.

In 1580, the new Lord Deputy of Ireland, Lord Arthur Grey de Wilton, came to Dublin with 3000 troops to end the Desmond Rebellion. Accompanied with his secretary, Edmund Spenser, the great English poet, he proved, in battle and in transactions with the enemy, formidable but flawed. This play follows the historical relation closely. This historical drama maintains the classical form of tragedy in English with seven scenes of dialogue and seven choral performances.

The earls of Essex and Southampton are tried together for high treason before a jury of the noblest peers. Pleading not guilty, they strive in angry and arrant disputation with Attorney General Edward Coke and Francis Bacon. This drama is the third part of an Aeschylean trilogy and maintains the classical form of tragedy in English, with seven scenes of dialogue and seven choral performances.

After his disobedient return from Ireland, the Earl of Essex was kept in house arrest, first in York House, then in his own palace, Essex House. He thought this punishment was extended by his enemies at court and plotted to rid Whitehall of those men. This play presents his imprisonment and subsequent plots pursued in London.

James Burbage, the founder of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, Shakespeare's acting company, is countered by Lady Elizabeth Russell in this play when he pursues the construction of a theatre inside the former Blackfriars' monastery in London. This historical drama maintains the classical form of tragedy in English with seven scenes of dialogue and seven choral performances.